Despite these differences, Repulse highlights that pain and grief don’t discriminate regardless of someone’s background or social strata. One is methodical and capable, while the other is crude. One family is clean the other is ensconced in filth. Repulse thrives with how it compares and contrasts these families. Both of these families are indebted to the idea of guardians and caretakers in one way or another, which turn the act of survival into a process that’s even more painful and depressing than death. These frayed family units process this trauma through uniquely horrifying coping mechanisms. Repulse engages in a staggering, heartbreaking dissection of two grieving families that are connected in vile ways. However, once the image of Repulse finally begins to take shape it’s too late to escape or become immune to these human horrors. Repulse’s most striking trait is the back-and-forth bifurcated narrative where its audience gradually begins to put together the pieces of this traumatic puzzle box. Repulse is one big Russian nesting doll of pain, torture, and humility that only grows more toxic as the film digs deeper and casts a wider net. It’s a grim mission statement, but one that reverberates through every single frame of Emil Krizka’s Repulse. It’s an isolating tactic, but one that immediately establishes that the world is a harsh, angry, confusing place. Repulse is intentionally sparse with its dialogue so that the raw weight of every gesture and groan speak for themselves. Screams of anguish are the only forms of dialogue that are present in the first ten minutes of Repulse, Emil Krizka’s ode to anger and revenge from the Czech Republic. Czech Republic’s ‘Repulse’ sinks the audience into an extended exercise in trauma that turns to brevity and non-linear storytelling to amplify its pain.

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